Great, let's start doing something about it instead of complaining. Here's my cynical take on a back of the napkin recipe for political change:
1. Call, write, tweet, and facebook your representatives, both local and federal, and tell them what you think- be sure to inflate your credentials and threaten to give money/votes/accolades to their political enemies. For bonus points, tell their enemies the same thing. For even more bonus points, run as a candidate yourself.
2. Write/speak/act out in the public sphere, make sure to get as much attention as possible and to be moderately vitriolic and abundantly populist in your rhetoric. Use only words, concepts, and rhetoric that a dim 9th grader would understand.
3. Join a physical protest- if there isn't one near you, it's your job to start one. I'd keep it nonviolent if I were you. I know that this isn't the cup of tea for most HN readers, but there's no way around it: physical presence matters, and the numbers of people who have protested surveillance thus far have been extremely paltry. We don't have the luxury of waiting for someone else to do it for us.
4. Convince your less-enlightened friends and relatives to do items 1-5, or at least be terrified of the government.
The best political threat we can create is converting minds. We need more writing and better articles to ground the flags flown on Facebook and Twitter. We need to appeal to people's reason and principles. Otherwise why bother?
If I could write well, I'd start a dialog around the concept that "We shouldn't have needed Snowden". The fact that we don't have transparency into our own government, that it took someone to break the law to give us the transparency we most certainly should have had into the NSA's activities (The national security arguments don't cut it and we need to explain that well), is a clear sign that our democracy is broken, that "government by and for the people" is dying.
Focus on average joes/peasants who have been hurt/otherwise disadvantaged by the surveillance.
If you can't find such an example, you need to take off the kid gloves and explain clearly that endemic surveillance is a cause of AND an effect of totalitarian governments.
Be sure to emphasize the historical incidences (STASI, Hoover, present day China/Russia) in which surveillance has been abused in order to support the narrative that once performed, surveillance will result in abuse.
As far as the day of action itself, I'd shift your focus onto trying to drum up physical presence-- anyone with a campaign can flood the internet, but flooding meatspace is much more difficult and also much more effectual.
EDIT: I thought about my comment for a while then realized it could be re-worded and re-thought out in a very simple way.
Your movement needs agitprop. Find a hornet's nest for the average joe, then hit it. Focusing on Aaron isn't the right way to go about that because most people have never heard of him. I have more feedback; email me if you'd like.
I don't think your take is particularly cynical. You seem to believe we can still stop this stuff. I think a cynic would have promoting encrypted communication as at least one of their bullet points.
I'm convinced that as much as people ever raise a hue and cry, including Congress, and including repealing or amending/trimming existing laws, the President has an ace in the hole to continue doing pretty much everything that is occurring now in the form of EO 12333.
So, I'm not sure where the repetition in this plan succeeds at affecting the executive order.
Your right, action is what is needed. We cannot expect most ordinary citizens to use by default the most secure communications or private setup.
Therefore the law needs to fall in favour of privacy for ordinary communications (SMS, calls, email). Our future politicians, representatives and all citizens are far from likely to be users of the most secure communication methods during their lives and the holding of their information is a complete affront to the democratic process.
1. Call, write, tweet, and facebook your representatives, both local and federal, and tell them what you think- be sure to inflate your credentials and threaten to give money/votes/accolades to their political enemies. For bonus points, tell their enemies the same thing. For even more bonus points, run as a candidate yourself.
2. Write/speak/act out in the public sphere, make sure to get as much attention as possible and to be moderately vitriolic and abundantly populist in your rhetoric. Use only words, concepts, and rhetoric that a dim 9th grader would understand.
3. Join a physical protest- if there isn't one near you, it's your job to start one. I'd keep it nonviolent if I were you. I know that this isn't the cup of tea for most HN readers, but there's no way around it: physical presence matters, and the numbers of people who have protested surveillance thus far have been extremely paltry. We don't have the luxury of waiting for someone else to do it for us.
4. Convince your less-enlightened friends and relatives to do items 1-5, or at least be terrified of the government.
5. Start again from 1; repeat until successful.